Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Waiter, there's cesium-137 in my soup!

The issues surrounding the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima are embellished by some and minimized by others. But whatever the true status of the plant and nuclear waste are what we do know is that the story is not discussed that often in mainstream sources for news.

The fact of the matter is that some "experts" say (the Japanese government) that the situation in Japan has been stabilized and that Fukushima poses virtually no risk to anyone.

Other opinions run the gamut from Fukushima being a potential health hazard for the foreseeable future in Japan to it affecting global health and food supplies until the half-lives of all radioactive elements present in the waste have been reached and surpassed.

That would assume of course that the flow of radioactive material out of the plant can at some point be stopped.

What we do know is that at the very least Reactor 4 continues to pose a serious ongoing problem and that a great deal of nuclear waste has already been dumped into the Pacific Ocean since the crisis began.

Assuming that ocean currents exist as we know that they do, this means that other parts of the world will be at some level of risk from the radioactive material and any effect that this material has on fish and other wildlife.

While all of this remains a serious unknown this story will continue to have legs and/or fins!

Waiter, I found radiation (not a fly and not soup) in my fish!

Dateline the California Coast: "...Radioactive cesium was detected in samples of highly prized
Pacific bluefin tuna, but it is well below levels considered unsafe for humans,
the scientists say.

The evidence is "unequivocal" that the tuna -
caught off San Diego a year ago - were contaminated with radiation from Japan's
nuclear disaster, the researchers said…

…Before the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, low levels of
the radioactive cesium-137 , which decays to harmlessness only over thousands
of years, had been measured in Japanese waters, while the shorter-lived
cesium-134 was undetectable, the scientists said. That difference, they said,
was crucial in concluding that the radioactive contamination was linked to the
Fukushima disaster…” (Source)